Book Review:
‘The Life of Robert Murray McCheyne’ by Andrew Bonar
“ Watch you life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” 1 Timothy 4:16
1 Timothy 4:16 is surely one of the most solemn verses in the New Testament. Although at one level Paul is giving a heart-warming promise of salvation, at another level he’s issuing a chilling warning. It’s a warning we in the 9:38 Web need to heed: that the pastor who is careless in word and deed will send both himself and his congregation to hell.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne, the pastor of St Peter’s, Dundee, was a man who understood 1 Timothy 4:16. He wrote once of his great fear that his flock would “lay the blame of [their] damnation at my door”; his corresponding zeal in both preaching and living out the gospel set an example which many over the years have followed.
M’Cheyne died in 1843 at the age of just twenty-nine but his few years of sowing the Word were used by God to bring in a great harvest of disciples in Scotland. The descriptions of revival that swept across Scotland in those years make remarkable reading. There was a deep conviction of sin and a great hunger for the Word; there were not just packed churches but even a gathering in the Meadows at Dundee which stood still in the heavy rain to listen to a sermon on Revelation 20.
What was it about M’Cheyne that left such an indelible impression on his listeners? Certainly he knew and loved his Bible and preached it with great boldness, but it was his godliness that was so remarkable. Bonar writes of one of M’Cheyne’s preaching visits: “the impression left was chiefly that there had been among them a man of peculiar holiness. Some felt, not so much his words, as his presence and holy solemnity, as if one spoke to them who was standing in the presence of God”.
Andrew Bonar was a close friend of M’Cheyne’s and quotes extensively from his diary; the result is a book that gives an open window into the life of a man whose famous prayer was wonderfully answered: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made”.
By Jerry Fowler